By George Hunter
The Detroit News
DETROIT — Detroit Police Chief James White expressed grief and frustration Thursday at a press conference discussing the 231st Detroit police officer to be killed in the line of duty.
Officer Loren Courts, 40, and a 19-year-old suspect, who police said was “indiscriminately” firing shots Wednesday night, died after an exchange of gunfire on the city’s west side, the police chief said, prompting him and other city leaders to decry rising gun violence.
“Don’t call me mad,” White said. “I’m focused. This is unacceptable, and this should be the line. Whatever your tipping point is, this should be it.”
White said the police department and Detroit’s residents were “robbed.”
“Today is a somber day for the Detroit Police Department,” he said. “We were robbed ... robbed of one of our heroes. The city was robbed of a great police officer, a great son and a great husband, and we should all be outraged.”
Courts and his partner, Amanda Hudgens, both five-year Detroit police veterans from the 2nd Precinct, responded at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to a report that a man was firing shots out the window of his apartment with a Draco semiautomatic pistol.
“They approached the building using their training and tactics, and they were ambushed,” White said. “The first officers to arrive were ambushed by this man.”
Courts was shot in the neck while still sitting in his squad car. White said it appeared the suspect fired out the closed window of his apartment above a barbershop, shattering glass.
“This brazen murderer, after shooting the officer, walked out of the building and proceeds toward the officer’s vehicle,” White said. “Officer Hudgens has to make a decision — she wants to keep direct pressure on (Courts’ neck wound), but behind her is the murderer walking toward them with this assault rifle.
“She made a choice that many people in the same circumstances would say they would make,” White said. “He’s advancing toward her with the Draco. She glances back, braces herself, and continues applying pressure.
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“Thankfully, there was another officer who stopped the threat,” White said.
The unnamed officer fired several rounds at the suspect, White said.
After officers rendered First Aid to Court, “they then administered First Aid to the murderer,” White said.
The chief said it’s “frustrating” to arrest suspects with histories of violence, only to see them back on the street with “low bonds.”
“We need help,” White said. “We need the courts, we need lawmakers to step up. It’s getting kind of old hearing about what people are going to do.”
White said the Draco was purchased recently, although he said it was unclear Thursday whether it was a legal purchase, and whether the suspect paid for it.
“My independent position is that these assault weapons should not be available to the public,” White said. “It’s not for hunting deer in November.”
Detroit Police Commissioner Ricardo Moore, a former Detroit cop whose District 7 includes the 2nd Precinct, said: “Elected officials have normalized crime in Detroit. They ignore it; it’s like this happens in Detroit, it’s no big deal. The music, violent video games, it all needs addressing. It’s all hands on deck.”
White said he has no words for Court’s family, including his father, a retired Detroit police officer.
“Yesterday was simply the worst day of this family’s lives, period,” he said. “I don’t have the words to make them feel better. All I can do is promise them we’ll never forget him.”’
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